I know them and love them. You know them and love them, too. I’m talking about the fantastic cast of “General Hospital.” An avid fan of the show since it premiered on April 1, 1963, it has been a joy watching the talented roster of actors over the decades bring life to Port Charles, not to mention the work of directors and craftsmen behind the lens, like the groundbreaking Gloria Monty, and now Frank Valentini. But some decades back it became a privilege when I started to get to know many of these wonderful artisans, either working with them in the industry, interviewing them or, in some cases, just hanging out and watching classic movies together. Some of the more recent GH folks whom I’ve interviewed include Maurice Benard, Ian Buchanan, and the “Dark Prince” himself, Tyler Christopher, and all related to projects outside of “General Hospital.” There is no shortage of first-rate acting chops here! And now I add WES RAMSEY to that esteemed list.
You may know him best now as Peter August aka Heinrich Faison, but long before “General Hospital“, Wes charmed us as the magical Wyatt Halliwell on “Charmed” and found his way into the wonderful world of soap operas with “The Guiding Light” and then on to “Days of Our Lives”. Theatre trained and a graduate of the prestigious Julliard School, Wes has continued to hone his skills, peppering the years with various characters in one-offs or multi-episode arc roles on television shows like “CSI: Miami”, “Pretty Little Liars”, “Castle”, “The Mentalist” and “Code Black”, as well as his roles in made for TV movies and independent films. One of those independent films currently on the festival circuit is PERCEPTION.
Written and directed by Ilana Rein and co-written with Brian Smith, PERCEPTION gives Wes a chance to stretch his already expansive acting muscles as his character Daniel is driven to the point of madness with obsession. A successful real estate developer, Daniel must evict Nina, a small-time, small-town psychic, when his company buys the property on which she hangs her shingle. Lured by Nina’s findings during a “free reading”, Daniel begins a quest to reconnect with his dead wife. But how far down the rabbit hole of obsession will Daniel go? And how far will Nina take him? A solidly constructed supernatural psychological thriller, the gravitas and emotional depth that Wes brings to this seemingly happy-go-lucky, hardworking man with a tortured soul is not only dynamic but riveting as Daniel slowly unravels.
On the run with GH fan fests and shooting, Wes snuck in some time to speak with me about not only PERCEPTION, but his passion for acting, and of course, Peter and Maxie and “General Hospital.” Beyond engaging, enthusiastic and passionate, Wes is articulate and thoughtful, and even though our interview was telephonic, it was easy to hear the smile in his voice.
A real joy to speak with you today, Wes. I’ve been watching you since the beginning of your career; watching you grow as an actor and really upping your game with each and every performance. You just keep getting better and better.
Wow! Thank you. I definitely know that it still matters a great deal to me, and it makes me very happy to be able to feel challenged, and push myself creatively. And I love what I do.
Watching what you’ve been doing on GH over the past year or so, and the emotion and the gravitas you’ve brought to that with the dichotomy between Heinrich and Peter, and now what I see you bring to “Perception”, you have just knocked it out of the park! To see your work in GH, particularly in those captivity sequences, and then to see you in “Perception” is amazing. The depth and honesty you give each character astounds. What do you tap into to create these characters? In “Perception” we watch Daniel descend into madness with a real plot twist. You’re cool, calm, and collected, and then slowly we see chinks as obsession grows, obsessive love grows. And freneticism. You took this character and this performance to a whole new level.
Well thank you, that’s a really great question. I think that any artist who passionately loves what they do is capable of seeing how far they can test themselves, or take themselves, or push themselves, with their own craft. Obviously, a visual artist simply needs to be left alone with some isolation, maybe some canvas and some paint to try and see what they can really find in, say, a dark night of their soul, if you will. But I think that for me I’ve always felt dramatically that I had more to offer than what had tested me thus far in my life, and in my career. And so I knew in my late 30’s when I was sort of closing out the decade, if you will, I got the opportunity to read the script and suddenly have it fall into my lap. I felt it was, not to be cliché, but I felt it was the one I had been waiting for. I really did. I thought, “I want this to be a part of how I bid farewell to this young adult decade of my life. Let me believe that the fact that this material scares me is everything I’ve been waiting in all of my 30’s for. I want to be able to make peace with it, if you will, by taking myself to that place I always believed I had in me, and I always knew I could go to.”
I had done it on stage in the theater when I was younger and some things like that, but it had never been captured on film, or in TV, to my knowledge. And the character Daniel in that script, I believed was that opportunity for me. So I dove all the way in. I was in my hometown at the time visiting family. I chose to not stay and live anywhere around my parents at the house I grew up in. I chose to go downtown to a hotel where I could isolate myself. I really submerged myself as deeply as I could psychologically into the journey to the point where I knew for the first time in my life that once I was done with this, that I was going to have to give myself a transition time period to let go and come back, if you will, to me. Because I’d believed it. I had psychologically achieved some things that I knew weren’t just going to disappear from being inside me heavily day in and day out, night in and night out. I just thought I’m gonna need a moment. I’m gonna need to be left alone when I finish shooting and then slowly incorporate myself back into a life amongst family and friends and whatnot. I just realized it was that uniquely different deeper step that I had taken myself to in order to just, quite frankly, pull it off. I knew that when I read it, it scared me, and the first time I saw the film it scared me. So I felt I had done what I set out to do. I quite frankly can think of very few moments in my life, or in my career,where I can say that; where I can feel that sense of complete satisfaction that I was able to do this, and then begin this journey on GH only a matter of months after I wrapped that film, and that I had made peace with something that I always knew I wanted to do in my career.
So it’s been a fantastic way to enter a new decade in my 40s, and to be now 20 years later given this incredible opportunity, to come full circle with daytime where I first began, and commit to it with everything I have, which was something else in the very beginning of my career when I started out very young, that I was tempted to want to do, but I knew I had not given it the amount of time, and the amount of energy it would have needed at my restless, youthful, beginning of my career. And so I’m very happy with “Perception”. I hope it makes it to many film festivals. I hope I can have moments when I have enough of a break from shooting to be able to go and represent the film and be there on the Q&A panels. I’m so proud of the work we did. Brian, and Ilana, and Caitlin, and Mira. And to be able to have that … I hope it has distribution too, I hope it makes its way out there. I believe it’s a uniquely dark and artistic story and I think it’s told beautifully. I’m really proud of it, and I’m really proud to be on GH at the same time; and not just starting, but over a year later after shooting this it’s now coming out. and I’m where I really cemented a position on the show with ABC, and with the GH family in Port Charles. To able to have this happening at the same time [“Perception” and GH], I probably will have to confess this will have to be one of the great highlights of my entire career.
As well it should be! I talked with your “Perception” director Ilana [Rein] earlier this morning and one of the things that she raved about and was most impressed by with you was your theater training. How important do you think your theater training has been with the type of roles that you have taken? Has it contributed to the roles you have taken?
I think it’s everything. I do. I think that any artist, any actor who’s very serious and fortunate enough to find themself, knowing how serious they are about it at a young age, not only would it behoove them to look into some type of conservatory training to build a foundation for themselves creatively, but to have that background in your career as you move forward is invaluable. I think whether it’s understanding your instrument, and your posture, and what you actually look like to an audience on stage, and understanding what comes across powerful, and what comes across weak, when you may not even have an awareness of that if you’re not familiar with your own sense of voice, speech, your breath, your weight, and how you work, how you move on a stage, those things I believe are the foundation for the most, what I’ve considered in my life, some of the most exceptional work I’ve ever seen. Whether it’s on stage in London. Whether it’s on stage in New York. Whether it’s right here in L.A. Or whether it’s happening on location behind a camera somewhere or in front of a camera rather somewhere. And some of my favorite artists, actors, performers, do have that. So I felt really fortunate that I had a supportive family that was behind me. When I was 12 years old and fell in love with the theater, and gave up all my sports, and all these other ambitions athletically, they stood behind me. They saw the talent was raw. They understood my level of commitment to it. And once I was accepted into Julliard I think it sort of cemented that all of this, which was seven years later, that I was very serious at age 12 that this is it. I’m not going to do anything with the rest of my life. Most kids, not only do they not know that, it’s not necessarily fair to assume, or think anyone really should, but for those that are finding themselves bitten by the bug when they’re a teenager, or they discover that calling in life, then I think it’s incredible to have the training programs that are out there.
I know some guys coming up that I’ve worked with, Zachary Quinto on “Heroes”, and Matt Bomer on “Guiding Light”. Those guys came out of Carnegie Mellon at the exact same time that I had been accepted to Carnegie Mellon. I would’ve been in classes with those guys but I ended up accepted into Julliard at the same time. And you know, Pittsburgh is a fantastic city, but I had gone to visit friends of mine that I’d done theater with who were already at NYU, and already living in Greenwich Village, and I saw New York City, and thought what campus on earth could beat this! The cultural training ground of just being alive as a young man in New York City in the 90’s was incredibly inspiring. And I knew how many great artists had passed through the city, and I wanted to feel like I was gleaning from their spirits for my own inspiration. So I definitely didn’t want to be the guy who says no to Julliard, and turns them down. I thought this is exactly the proof I needed to know that I’m on the right path.
You’ve done television series, soap operas which means rapid-fire, pages and pages and pages of dialogue a day that you’ve gotta shoot, indie films, TV series one-offs, and you’ve done stage. So I’m curious, is there any type of preparation that you go through that differs between the different mediums? Do you prepare differently, or approach it differently for soap opera work as opposed to an indie film like “Perception”, which as all indie filmmakers know is also run and gun. You’ve got a minimal amount of time on an indie film to get the film done.
Yes. So obviously the more prep work, the more time you have for any preparation for a film the better off you are. One of my favorite movies of all time, “Running On Empty”, directed by Sidney Lumet with Judd Hirsch, Christine Lahti, and Martha Plimpton, and a miraculous 17-year-old River Phoenix who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1988 for this film, I read that they had a gymnasium rented and they had two weeks. They put masking tape down on the floor of the gymnasium and they created the home that they were gonna be in and they all lived there together during these long rehearsal periods as a family. That’s the kind of thing that you do when you’re working on stage in the theater for a play. But you rarely ever get something like that for any pre-production with a film. Or certainly not with television.
So the time that we had to work on “Perception”, I thought about that. We did have some time together to improvise and to work on character development. Obviously if you have a play or any kind of a script for a feature film, especially if it’s a period piece, the amount of just historical research and background work you need to do to understand the world that it’s existing in before you can even get to these are the words you have to say is immense. Why are you saying them? Who are you to be saying them? And what’s all this about? That’s all the stuff you need to be able to find. And I think, in a way, not to quote another cliché, but that’s kind of, I believe, script analysis, and the research you can do for a role. I think that’s some of the stuff that really separates the men from the boys.
I think that with a soap opera, daytime is its own beast. It’s amazing because I feel like it’s a proscenium stage when we’re there and yet there are cameras covering everything, so we’re not doing multiple coverage. It’s almost like they’re taping or filming at all times this ongoing play that we’re doing. The amount of material is massively overwhelming at times and anyone that is not used to it, not only are they out of their element, but there’s nothing else to be compared to it. It’s truly a mountain to climb on any given day. And the next day the mountain could be even bigger. And you have to get through it, you have to go to bed, and wake up and figure it out.
I know with my character [Peter August on GH] I had been given the information about who my character really was right before the three week Christmas break with New Year’s attached in December 2017. So once it was finally revealed to me, I had already been on the show for a couple months and I was kind of scratching my head thinking, “What are all these secrets that no one’s telling me?” Once I was informed it was up to me during those three weeks to go figure out what this means in the legacy of the show. So all of my work was watching Finola [Hughes] and Anders [Hove] playing Anna and Cesar Faison on YouTube clips – and there are hundreds of ’em out there! So I’m going back and watching these characters on the show in the 80’s and in the 90’s; watching the way they move and listening to the way they talk. Obviously, none of the stuff about the characters of Anna and Peter was revealed to me then, only that I was the son of Faison. The fact that it became Anna as well later, I felt it was fantastic that I’d already been watching so much of her as well. And watching his obsession with her and watching the way they performed and acted together over the years. I felt like a lot of the groundwork I needed for my scenes with her had already happened in preparing to work with Anders and being Cesar Faison’s son.
Basically, to answer the question, I think it’s different for each one. But at the same time, when you have the background and you have the training, you’re reaching into the same big box of tools no matter what. To get out there and pull it off, and figure it out. So that’s why I think, like you were saying, it makes all the difference when you have an actor who has some training under their belt. They’ve figured that out for themselves. They have their own process.
Interestingly, you just mentioned watching Faison’s obsession with Anna over the decades. And isn’t it ironic that you now tackle the character of Daniel, who is obsessed … There’s a striking similarity there, Wes.
Yes. Actually, you’re right. And I had briefly thought about that, but I’m glad you brought that up because there is something strangely dark and obsessive about the background of both of those characters. And certainly what it turns into very quickly in Daniel’s life. He really has not idea it’s coming, whereas in the history of Faison, it’s this slow-burning build over the course of a lifetime of never being able to get over, let go, of this person. But at the same time obsession is obsession. And when it goes bad it goes really bad. It would even be an honest debate on what kind of healthy good obsession is there, because chances are if it’s there, at any moment it’s about to go bad.
I know you have a busy day, but one more question before I let you go because all of your “General Hospital” fans would not forgive me if I did not ask this: Is there anything that you can tell me, or that you hope to see, with what’s happening between Peter and Maxie? Or where you want to see Peter go as a character?
Oh, that’s a great question! I have so much fun working with Kirsten [Storms]. She’s really such a brilliant young woman and so talented. And we’re having a lot of fun! I think that exploring how deprived Peter felt throughout his entire life of having a connection in terms of family, a connection in terms of being able to be vulnerable. Certainly, his connection to his nephew James is, in his heart, the only pure family that exists for him. Peter naturally feels a very protective streak over Maxie. And I think that that’s really honest. And I think it’s beautiful. And I would love to see Peter fall in love. I would love to know what it’s like to understand the sides of his life that’s perhaps in all of his travels, in all of his life, trying to get out from under the shadow of his father or to try and best his father or prove himself to his father and get love or attention or affection in any way from his father, rather than mocking abuse, and abandonment. I think it would be really incredible to see what Peter’s heart is like when it’s able to open up in that way because as the incomparable Laura Wright always reminds me whenever we’re working and talking about all this stuff, she says, “Yes he’s Faison’s son, but he’s also Anna Devane’s.” And I know what she means by that. It’s that you’re not destined to live in darkness, you have this brilliant shining light that is also a part of you. I think that’s part of what I see in Peter’s future with Maxie. And I hope the writers are able to give us something to look forward to with all of that.
by debbie elias, exclusive interview 11/08/2018
